Chapter 3 - Powers
Powers are what set your Super apart from the more mundane citizens of Ironbound. Powers can follow a large range from physical powers such as Super Strength or things such as throwing fire, telekinesis and things like flight or super speed. Even technological abilities are considered powers. Your Plasma Rifle is considered a power under this system. If your cybernetic arms have machineguns built in, its considered a power. Your super listening device that can translate 150 languages is considered a power. All of these are bought at character creation with Power Points. I'll go through the systems on how powers work before I give you the list that you can select your powers from. This is so that you can understand why you're putting points into powers before you pick them. Power Control Your powers can come from any number of sources. Whether it's a genetic mutation that you've gained simply by becoming suffused with the energies or the area, or your super intelligence and the weapons and devices that you construct, powers need to be controlled. Sometimes Powers can get away from a hero with catastrophic results to either themselves or to the environment. A Super must control their powers with their every use. This gets easier with experience however. What kind of Super would you be if you were killed after the first use of your powers? So for every power there’s a Control Check. Every power has a Control number which will be explained here shortly which is checked against your Intelligence + Endurance divided by 2, plus any modifiers you add from your Powercraft skill or Luck. Control Number The Control Number is a pretty simple concept. However it can change depending on a number of things. Your base Control number is twice the Power level that you’re attempting to cast. For example, if you’re attempting to use a Level 5 Power then your base Control Number is 10. The Control number can be modified in a number of ways, most of which are GM’s discretion. They are going to be explained below. Overpowering Powers It is possible to overpower a Power. In this context Overpowering is the ability to use an already learned Power at a greater level than you currently have learned. This has several benefits but comes at the cost of being incredibly more unmanageable. The benefits are increased damage, increased range, and increased duration (if applicable). The downside to this is the increased Control Number. It would stand to reason that your control number would increase because you are attempting to wield energies much more powerful than your body is used to manipulating yet, so you are much less experienced in their use. When Overpowering a Power the Control Number increases to three times the level of Power you’re attempting to cast. The Drain is also much more profound, but that will be explained in its own section. Power Drain Manipulating Powers and energy is tiring and takes its toll upon your body. This is shown by Power Drain. Power Drain is equal to the level of Power that you are casting. You can only tolerate as much Power Drain in one round equal to your Endurance Attribute. For example a level three Power creates three points of Power Drain normally. If you have level five in Endurance you can use a level two Power for one action, and a level three Power for another, or you can use it all at once in one big level five Power. There are several things that can modify Power drain as mentioned earlier. Overpowering a Power is the main way to increase Power Drain. Overpowering a Power increases the normal drain of the spell by 3. It is much more tiring to use a Power you’re not powerful enough for than it is to use one at a level that you’ve mastered. Levels and Powers As you can tell by now, many systems in this game are entirely different than other RPG’s. Power levels work differently as well. As you progress in levels, instead of gaining more powerful versions and variations of lower powered Powers, you can either increase an already learned Power or learn a new one altogether. The other systems tend to leave characters with a cluttered list of abilities most of which will never be used again after attaining a more powerful version. This simplifies things. Here is how Power levels work. At character creation you are given two automatic Power levels, meaning you start the game essentially with two Powers since your Power level can’t exceed your character level. When you gain another level you gain two more Power Levels to allocate. You can either increase the Powers you already have, or learn new ones. As your Powers gain levels they can do more damage/heal more damage, increase in range and duration. An interesting note also is that you can use a Power at a lower level than you have it mastered to at no penalty. This reduces Power Drain, and allows you to use more Powers per round. This is incredibly handy when fighting weaker enemies, as it’s not always in good sense to kill an ant with an atom bomb. When using a powered down Power it does abilities are of the level that you are casting it at, but again the drain is also less. Restrictions on Power Levels There are some restrictions on Power levels however. You may not increase an existing Power above your characters current level. If you’re Super is level three, then your Power are also maxed out at level three until you gain another level. Those are the only restrictions on Power levels to date, but I imagine that more will pop up as new instances occur. =Powers= There's been a lot of babble and rules but we'll now get to the powers themselves. Selecting powers is a bit different than in other RPG systems. Below are several examples of how power selection works. Anne is making her Super and decided that she wants her character to be able to throw fire balls and have laser vision. So for her two powers at creation she picks two Projection themes. She takes her first power as Projection: Fireball and her second as Projection: Laser Beam Eyes. She then enters the information from the Projection pertaining to Range, Damage and Duration. Both of her powers are at level one since this is character creation and Power level can't exceed Character Level. Brad has decided that he wants to make an 'all american' meatshield type of character. So he takes first an Augmentation and defines it as Super Strength. So he has Augmentation: Super Strength and now he needs to make him nigh invulnerable and so adds Augmentation: Invulnerability. He will be able to add new powers or increase the current powers when he gains a new level but for now this is as far as he can go. He makes adjustments to his attributes to reflect the powers that he's taken and carries on with the rest of character creation. and one last example: Mike is making a Technological character. While the character will eventually have an incredibly large arsenal he can only have two gadgets at level one. So he decides that he would like a Plasma Rifle and a combat droid. This may sound strange when it comes to superheroes, all of your gadgets will count as a power selection. So Mike selects Technological: Plasma Rifle and Technological: Combat Droid. This again may sound very strange but things really come down to several variation in themes. Projection This group of Powers involves the Super gathering energy and releasing it from his body across a distance. This is probably the most popular group of Powers from any RPG, leading to the imagining of glorious Superhero battles involving hellfire and frozen spikes being hurled. This group isn’t limited to simple fire and ice, but can pertain to nearly any projectile. Examples are: * Fire (fireballs or a fan of fire extending from the hands), * Ice (Frozen spears of Ice), * Earth (rocks, earthen spears), * Energy (pure energy, divine energy, Negative energy blasts) * Lightning (bolts, balls of lightning) * Plasma (bolts of plasma, beams) * Venom (ball of poisonous venom) These are the most common variations, though many more can be thought of. All of these have their obvious uses, making taking more than one type very useful. The general statistics are the same for each of them. At first level they do 5 points of damage, have a range of 20 feet and the duration is instantaneous. For each additional level they gain +5 damage and +5 feet to range. Melee This group of Powers involves the Super's powers that are effective at only hand to hand, or melee range. These powers would be much like the Projection powers but are only effective at a Melee range One of the following bonuses are picked for each power level that this power has: +1 Strike, +1 Damage, +5' Area of Effect Augmentation Augmentations are a group of Powers that more affect the Super's physical body. While not nearly as flashy as some other groups of powers this makes them no less potent. Some examples are * Super Strength * Super Intelligence * Invulnerability (+2 Damage Resist) * Super Agility * Super Accuracy Augmentations give your characters a +2 per level to the augmented attribute. This is the only way to increase your Attributes above 8. Technology This type of category may come off as very strange to some so it may require a bit more explanation. People will surely ask why this doesn't just get carried into equipment and allow the person to select more actual powers and many other variations on that question. The real answer is that there needs to be some sort of balancing. The technology category of powers can encompass nearly every other power in some regards but they are a bit different. Technology covers weapons, droids, cybernetic or bionic parts, gadgets, and various other things. For example: Bob wants to make a character with a Cybernetic eye and a cybernetic arm right now. He eventually wants his cybernetic eye to be able to fire a laser, be able to have a full sensor array and be used as a camera. He also wants his arm to be super strong, armored, and be able to fire plasma blasts. However at character creation you can only select two powers so he opts for Technology: Cybernetic Eye - Sensors and he decides that he can wait for some of the other features so he picks Technology: Cybernetic Arm - Plasma Blast. '' Now when he gains future power points he can use them to pick the other accessories that he wants. These will be listed as separate powers with their own levels to generally indication increased sophistication and power. Technology powers have an incredibly wide array of options but they also need to be repaired or installed by a skilled technician and they take time to invent/upgrade/install. If they're damaged you essentially lose that power until it can be repaired. So there are certainly downsides to duplicating some of the more organic versions of the powers. Technology powers take their abilities and modifiers from the other themes that they're essentially mimicking. If your cybernetic arms mimic give you Super Strength then they take their modifiers from the Augmentation category. A note though, if your Arms give you Super Strength, that Augmentation only applies to those arms and not your whole body Travel These powers are geared towards the more traditional travel oriented powers such as Flight or Super Speed, etc. The specific method of travel is to be determined by the player but some examples are: * Flight * Super Speed * Super Leaping * Tunneling * Super Awesome Vehicle Regardless of your chosen form of travel the stats are still the same. For each level you can travel an additional 50 miles per hour. Armor Armor represents means other than Invulnerability or the such to defend yourself. This could either be through technological suits of armor, much like an Iron Man type of armor or a more mundane suit of armor to magical armors. Regardless of the type of armor employed they all give the same bonuses. Any other powers that the armor possesses need to be represented through powers from other themes. All forms of armor give a base +2 to damage resistance per level. Things such as Invulnerability can be added to the armor but will apply only to when wearing the suit. Augementation: Invulnerability and Armor will not stack independently. Examples Include: * Technological Armor * Mundane Armor * Artifact Armor Personal Weapon A Super's Personal Weapon would be any weapon or weapons that they hold dear or it could represent an arsenal that the character is in possession of. Much like Technology, each gun/weapon needs to be recorded as a separate power with it's own level. The higher the level of the Personal Weapon, the more powerful or sophisticated the weapon is. Powerful magical weapons such as Thor's Hammer or Excalibur would be represented here as well as if your character has a large cache of guns they bring with them. For example: ''Your character is an armed to the teeth vigilante. Each weapon would be represented by a Personal Weapon power. So your powers would look like Personal Weapon: AK-47, Personal Weapon: 9mm Pistol, Personal Weapon: Rocket Launcher. The weapons that you would level up in this case would do more damage and would most likely represent the character's favorite weapons or the more sophisticated weapons. Please note that for Personal Weapons that ammunition isn't taken into account. This leaves things much easier to deal with as far as record keeping goes and it's generally assumed that the character would carry enough ammunition with them to make it through a mission. On the other side of things Personal Weapon can represent simply a magical weapon or artifact such as Thor's Hammer. You can select one bonus per each Power Level: +1 Strike, +1 Damage, +1 Parry, +20' Range Damage and such is dealt with on a per weapon basis, based upon numbers for weapons and such later in the handbook. Control Control can be something of a broader category than initially thought. Control can represent the Super's ability to control an element to various degrees. Control can also be taken to mean that the character can control animals, insects, or various things like that. The Control power would differ from the Projection ability in that Control tends towards less damaging applications. A separate Control power must be taken for each item that the Super can control. For example: Nathan is a telemechanic. He can control machines and electronics from a distance. So on his character sheet he would have Control: Machines for his power or another example: Alarissa is a Warlock with control over the elements. Her powers listing would look like Control: Air, Control: Fire, Control: Earth, Control: Water. As stated above, Control tends towards less combat oriented abilities. Attacks with Ice or Fire would follow more into the Projection category while extinguishing a fire or causing water to freeze so that you can walk across a lake would be more in the Control category. Clear Examples of Control abilities: * Control Elements (taken individually) Fire, Earth, Air, Water, Wood, etc * Control Mind (Telepathy) * Control Animals (taken individually) * Control Plants Control powers aren't meant to do damage per se but more for, for lack of a better term, crowd control. If you want to damage someone with Fire, take the Projectile or the Melee attack powers. To entangle someone in roots or vines, to put out or direct fire, to construct a wall of earth, etc would fall more under the control abilities. Alteration Alteration is your Super's ability to transform all or parts of their body into different things. Transforming into animals, turning your body into metal or another element, growing animal claws or the like would fall under alteration. The alteration power can't be used to replace other powers. Simply turning into Steel doesn't give your character super strength. While it may make you a bit more durable, gaining super strength would have to be purchased with the Augmentation category. These augments can give you a modification to your abilities but not into the Super category. growing claws would give you a bonus to hand to hand damage and turning your body to steel would give you a bit of additional damage resistance. Turning into a Cheetah would bump up your speed a bit and so on but Alteration can't be used to give super strength or super speed or the like. For each level of Alteration, for each form you gain +2 bonus to attributes. This can be taken on the same attribute or split between two separate attributes. This would stack on top of any bonuses that you gain from Augmentations and only take effect while you're in that form. For example: Sarah has a Werewolf type form. at level 1 she could add +2 attribute points that apply to that form only. She decides to take +1 Strength and +1 Endurance at level 1. If she increases that Werewolf form to level 2 she'll have 2 more points that she's allowed to put into that form. For those who have partial transformations you can add +2 points dependent on the type of alteration. If for example your character can grow animal claws they have 2 points that they could put between damage, strike, or parry. If the alteration is the ability to transform your skin into a hard carapace then you'd have 2 points to split between damage resist or block.